Author Archive

The indefatigable Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville is the first to declare the global temperature anomaly for December 2017. As Fig. 1 shows, in the 39 years 1 month from December 1978 to December 2017, the planet has warmed by half a Celsius degree. But that is equivalent to 1.28 C°/century, or little more than one-third of the 3.3 C°/century predicted with “substantial confidence” by IPCC in 1990 and also by the fifth-generation general-circulation models of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project in 2013.

Fig. 1 The least-squares linear-regression trend on the entire UAH satellite shows monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows warming at a rate equivalent to just 1.28 C°/century from December 1978 to December 2017.

Is the rate of global warming rising inexorably? The answer is No, as Fig. 2 shows:

Pete Boettke from Coordination Problem, formerly The Austrian Economists, posts on the application of research findings from Katrina and other disasters to Haiti. The bottom line is that recovery from disaster is just another example of development and the same rules apply.

Two of the lead researchers in this project were Russell Sobel of West Virginia University (a leading scholar in empirical public choice) and Emily Chamlee-Wright of Beloit College (a leading scholar of qualitative research in economic development). I asked both if they would share what they thought were the main lessons from their study of Hurricane Katrina for how to deal with the tragedy in Haiti.

Russ Sobel replied: “Pete Leeson and I argue in our Katrina work that the role of government after a disaster is similar to their proper role in normal times. Protect rights, create law and order, and let markets get to work in delivering and allocating goods and services. (emphasis added) The stories I’ve heard about the looting and lawlessness there, similar to Katrina, show how the government is failing to do it’s basic job yet again. After Katrina not only did the government fail at this job, but then it also infringed on the market’s ability to work–a double whammy.”

Emily Chamily-Wright replied: “The theme we ought to hit is “what can outsiders do to tap the capacity of civil society?”. This advice is rather general and abstract, but that is part of the point. Official relief providers can extend their effectiveness by identifying community networks and leaders within those networks that can be the source of local knowledge, authority, and habits of association that can be pivotal to rescue operations, administration of relief and taking the first steps toward recovery.”

The Rathouse is a website which replaced an older Fortune City site because this became loaded with pop-ups (the downside of a free site), also the Webmistress was unhappy with the limited range of fonts and other things that artists like to play with.

The Rathouse launched in September 2002, not long after the Popper Centenial Conference in Vienna. The site is named after the Rathaus, the Great Hall of Vienna.

After practicing with the Rathouse The Webmistress set up a site of her own to display her artworks and illustrations.

The core of the site consisted of articles about Karl Popper, Bill Bartley and F A Hayek which were printed in the long-defunct Melbourne Age Monthly Review. This was a bold adventure into high journalism, possibly inspired by the late Robert Haupt. The Review took long articles on more or less intellectual topics. The dominant tone was leftwing and postmodern. Cynics called it The Mogadon and some suggested it was more for the writers than for the readers. In the event there were not enough readers and it was dumped.

But the damage was done. The first piece which I submitted appeared under the heading The Purpose of Popper and the editor advised that this aroused more positive feedback from readers than any other piece to date. This suggested that it is not a compete waste of time to keep the ideas of critical rationalism alive for the benefit of a lay audience.

As long as you remember that Tropes Are Not Bad (see above), then there are some take home messages in this film that don’t fit anywhere on the conventional political spectrum, along with a good bunch that do (see above once again). The best of these came up courtesy a review published by the Von Mises Institute, which I’ve excerpted below. I don’t agree with all of it, but it shows — when someone does wheel out one of the great Joseph Campbell heroic tropes — that the rest of us can project almost anything onto what we see.

Redneck glimpses (courtesy of Tim Blair). Shades of “Wake in Fright”, goes on a bit long but.

The second factor is less obvious, but possibly also of great importance. Liberal Democrats won a major victory in the 2008 elections, winning the presidency and large majorities in both the House and Senate. They interpreted this as evidence that a large majority of Americans want major reforms in the economy, health-care and many other areas. So in addition to continuing and extending the Bush-initiated bailout of banks, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler and other companies, Congress and President Obama signaled their intentions to introduce major changes in taxes, government spending and regulations—changes that could radically transform the American economy.

This result seems to capture the long-term culture of higher education policy on the Coalition side – some broadly sound but half-hearted and quarter-way policy suggestions, trumped by political nervousness. There has never been a critical mass of Coalition MPs who care enough and know enough about the issue to take some political risks to achieve something really worthwhile.

There is a very interesting blogger in New Zealand who set up a site for the critical discussion of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. He also links to Catallaxy and the Rathouse, being an admirer of Critical Rationalism.